It’s te wiki o te reo Māori and this year more than ever this is something that we, as a country, must celebrate and embrace.
As tangata tiriti, I feel a responsibility to embrace Māori culture and specifically te reo to support its future. In my opinion, it’s disingenuous for us to admire the All Blacks performing the haka and asking kaumatua to perform Pōwhiri for overseas dignitaries while removing the use te reo in government agencies. Conversations and actions by the current government are aimed at dividing us, diminishing te tiriti - our founding document, and undoing the progress of the last 20 years. I do and will continue to fight against these actions.
I am incredibly proud to have majored in Māori Studies and Political Science at University. Te reo was only a small part of the degree with my decision to study Māori Studies being multifaceted. One of the key influences came from the year before I started uni, when I did a high school exchange to Springfield, Missouri. One of the most common questions I was asked by insular Americans was “What language do you speak in New Zealand?” When I replied with English, I’d quickly follow it up with something like “There’s another language, Māori, but it’s not widely spoken.” The more I repeated this line the more irritated I became by it. I also have a distinct memory of the immense embarrassment I felt when I wasn’t able to recall the word for nine when asked to count to ten in Māori. Iwa, nine in te reo is iwa - I will never forget again. These experiences significantly contributed to my enrolling in Māori 103 - Introduction to Spoken Māori in 2005 and defined the three years to follow.
Having not really learnt languages before (not counting the 1 hour a week at intermediate of Frau Binnie teaching us German), one of my biggest takeaways was that while learning a language, you learn about the culture and the history of the people whose native tongue you are embracing. Your understanding of where they’ve come from, what they’ve had to fight for and why they do things in certain ways deepens. I was reminded of this some 15 years later when living in Sweden and learning Swedish. I honestly believe that language learning can go a long way to help curb racism. To be clear it’s not going to solve all the issues that cause racism, but I think it plays a part.
Over my life, the revitalisation of te reo has come a long way. While I’m not old enough to remember the protests and petitions that led to the Māori Language Act, 1987, I am forever grateful to the activists who fought for the revitalisation of te reo. I was even lucky enough to be taught by some of them at Waipapa Tuamata Rau or Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau as it was known in my day, the University of Auckland. I am, however, old enough to remember the uproar of “Kia ora Shortland Street.” This was such a pivotal moment in the use of te reo in our mainstream media and definitely paved the way for the everyday use of te reo on our TV shows, news, radio and now also on social media.
Whilst I feel that I have lost a lot of what I learnt at University, the more I am surrounded by te reo, the more I realise that it’s still in there, waiting to be tapped into once again. Am I perfect? Absolutely not! But you bet I will stick with this journey for the rest of my life.
Over the last five years, I’ve loved finding ways to incorporate te reo in the Foodprint community. So here are a few things that we do to embrace te reo Māori as a team and as a business:
We incorporate te reo in our communications, even if it’s a greeting or the use of Aotearoa, these small acts matter to me greatly. Do we receive backlash from it, unfortunately, yes. But honestly, this makes me dig my heels in and do it more.
For the last couple of years, our team have been using gorgeous day planners from Tuhi Stationery. These have days and months in te reo, a daily Hei mahi māku - to-do lists as well as loads of other resources including karakia, information about Matariki and ngā mata o te marama - the phases of the moon. I highly recommend checking them out for your 2025 stationery.
We’ve recently started a Kupu o te Wiki - word of the week. It’s something topical to the team for that week and is combined with a sentence. For example, we’ve had - Hei tēnei wiki ka haere a Mea rāua ko Robyn ki ngā whare kai i waho ō Tāmaki Makaurau. And Moe mai rā Kiingi Tūheitia. One thing I’ve really enjoyed about this is how much of my reo from my university days is still in there ready to be re-ignited.
A team Matariki celebration is now an annual event. I love that each year we sit down as a team and grow our knowledge of te Ao Māori over kai.
When we printed our seasonal eating calendars, we used te reo for the days and months as well as every fruit and vegetable. I’m still grateful for the generosity of Hemi Kelly for his support in this project.
The whole team have access to macrons on their keyboards to ensure we’re spelling words correctly (yes, I know not all iwi use macrons).
When asked to speak at events, I will always open with my pepeha. I use a variation of the pepeha that I put together for my very first assignment at uni.
We played the tangi of Kīngi Tūheitia and the coronation of Kuini Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō in the office and made sure to pause to watch and listen to some of the key moments.
Here are some of my favourite reo Māori resources:
I would love to hear how you incorporate te reo in your workplace, so please drop a note in the comments below.
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